Abstract
David Hume’s and later Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views on concepts are generally presented as standing in stark opposition to each other. In a nutshell, Hume’s theory of concepts is taken to be subjectivistic and atomistic, while Wittgenstein is metonymic with a broadly pragmatistic and holistic doctrine that gained much attention during the second half of the 20th century. In this essay, I shall argue, however, that Hume’s theory of concepts is indeed much more akin to the views of (post-Tractarian) Wittgenstein and his epigones than many, including Wittgenstein himself, probably might have suspected. As I try to show, Hume anticipates many themes central to Wittgenstein’s writings on language and meaning, and actually takes initial steps towards both an anti-subjectivistic and anti-atomistic psychology and epistemology.
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Notes
Cf. Teed Rockwell’s “The Effects of Atomistic Ontology on the History of Psychology,” http://www.cognitivequestions.org/psych.html, accessed 23 October 2015.
For a more detailed exposition of the pragmatist account of mental explanation, cf. Hommen and Osswald (2016).
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Thanks to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for funding my research and to anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Hommen, D. Wittgensteinian Pragmatism in Humean Concepts. Philosophia 44, 117–135 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9681-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9681-8